The U.S. should bar Hong Kong’s chief executive, John Lee Ka-chiu, from entering the U.S. later this year because of his placement on the Treasury Department’s Specially Designated Nationals List, lawmakers said this week. Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Reps. Chris Smith, R-N.J., and Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said they are concerned the Hong Kong official could visit California in November as the U.S. hosts the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), which includes China as a member. They said the State Department should make a “clear announcement that human rights violator John Lee will not be invited to APEC, in accordance with U.S. sanctions law.”
Exports to China
China imposed inspection and quarantine requirements on imports of beef from Poland and coconut meal from the Solomon Islands, the General Administration of Customs announced in a two separate notices, according to an unofficial translation. The measures on the Polish beef apply to frozen edible boneless beef under 30 months old, including cheek muscles, head muscles, diaphragm muscles, minced meat, ground meet and trimmings. Byproducts are not allowed to be shipped to China. The measures on the coconut meal refer to byproducts of coconuts after cleaning and pressing, and are aimed at making sure pests do not enter with the meal.
American universities and research labs should make sure they’re screening against a new Defense Department list of Chinese, Russian and Iranian institutions that have “elevated risks,” Crowell & Mooring said in a July 11 client alert. The list, published by DOD June 30, includes more than 45 entities that “have been confirmed as engaging in problematic activity,” including behavior that increases the risk that DOD-funded research could be “misappropriated to the detriment of national or economic security.”
President Joe Biden this week renewed a national emergency authorizing certain sanctions related to Hong Kong. The White House said "recent actions taken by the People’s Republic of China to fundamentally undermine Hong Kong’s autonomy" continue to threaten U.S. national security. The sanctions were renewed for another year from July 14.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said no decision has been made yet on whether there will be an executive order limiting outbound investment in China. "It's still something being discussed in the administration and the timing of it is not yet certain," she said on "Face the Nation" from China, before she returned from a diplomatic visit there. "But I wanted to explain to my Chinese counterparts that if we go forward with this executive order, that we will do so in a transparent and narrowly targeted way." She said what's being considered is only for "very narrow high technology areas," and should not significantly impact overall investment in China.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she is “concerned” about China’s new export controls on critical minerals used to produce semiconductors (see 2307060053), saying the U.S. is still assessing the impact but that they “remind us of the importance of building resilient and diversified supply chains.” Speaking during a July 7 roundtable with American businesses in China, Yellen said the administration is working to make sure U.S. companies are competing with China on a “level playing field.”
Micron Techology is preparing for revenue losses caused by China’s recent sales restrictions on its products, saying in a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing that Beijing “may prevent us from competing effectively with Chinese companies.” The U.S. semiconductor company said the restrictions are leading to “significant headwind” that “is impacting our outlook and slowing our recovery.”
Japan plans to “compare notes” with the U.S. and other Group of 7 countries on risks posed by outbound investments, said Keiichi Ono, Japan’s senior deputy minister for foreign affairs. But Ono stopped short of saying Japan will implement new outbound screening measures, saying the country is still studying the restrictions.
As the U.S. continues to expand its chip export controls, South Korean and other multinational firms with semiconductor investments in China “face an uncertain future,” the Peterson Institute for International Economics said in a report this week. The report, authored by PIIE senior fellow Martin Chorzempa, outlines both the “collateral damage and new opportunities” for South Korean companies as a result of the Commerce Department's Oct. 7 controls (see 2210070049), saying Korean firms “have been some of the most impacted non-Chinese firms due to their large memory chip production facilities in China.” The report also recommends the U.S. do more to “reduce uncertainty” for allies operating in the region.
One of the leaders in the move to pass the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act recently introduced a new bill that would require the administration to produce an annual report on foreign persons "found facilitating the exploitation of child labor" in the mining sector in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and would instruct the administration to impose sanctions on those individuals.